Alligator or Crocodile: Google maps wanted me to find out in person!
Google maps is mostly wonderful, but occasionally just terrible. I rented a car at the Athens airport and drove back to a hotel where I was staying. The hotel was six miles away in a little village. For some reason, Google maps told me to leave the highway and take a dirt road to the hotel. For almost a mile, I followed the road with an increasing sense of foreboding. At first it was two very small cars wide, then narrower.
Then it went from straight to winding. There were stray dogs on and near the road. Then the road turned slightly downhill. Although Athens is mostly very hilly, the area near the airport is flat and occasionally marshy. Slightly downhill can be significant.
It was. I rounded a corner and there was a puddle. A big puddle. A width of the road puddle. I stopped. I stared. In the light of a waxing moon, the puddle was black but illuminated by the lunar light. I looked beside the puddle and saw no clear path. The puddle itself was smooth—not rocks or branches sticking up through the surface, so it was deep. The Renault Clio I was driving had about three inches of ground clearance, I had one bar of cell service, so I turned around and went back to the highway.
Google tried to get me to turn around and go back to the impromptu alligator habitat, but I kept driving on the highway until it recalculated me a route on pavement. Or was it crocodiles?
